What would it take to get us off our rear ends in this country?

I assume you’re aware of the riots in Turkey. The people of Turkey, or at least a unhappy group of them, are making themselves and their feelings known in a very direct way. According to the WSJ, it began over a park in Istanbul that was going to be replaced by a housing development and shopping center (since the Turkish government controls the media, this “cause” could be as flaky as the anti-Islamic video causing Benghazi). The natives, or at least some of them, are not happy about that.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is not happy about the situation either. Why, how dare these people question his government and its motives. They’re pure as the driven snow:

“If you can call someone who is a servant of the country a dictator, then it leaves me speechless,” he said in a televised speech. “I have no aim other than serving the nation.”

The siren song of every dictator I’ve ever heard of or read about. My guess he borrowed the words from Mr. Assad in Syria, who, may have gotten them from Saddam Hussein, who … well you get the picture. And add a little “Bolivarian revolution” to the statement and the dead but unlamented Hugo Chavez or his mentor Fidel Castro could have said them.

Perhaps the most interesting statement, however, came from someone in the street:

People are angry because the government is interfering in everything, be it the alcohol restriction, building of the third bridge, or the new Taksim Square. Everything has piled up, and that’s why people protest,” said Erdal Bozyayla, a 29-year-old restaurant worker who supported the protesters and condemned the violence.

I’d like to believe that’s the real sentiment behind those riots and protests. It may not be. But it got me to thinking what it would take in this country for people to actually take that sort of direct action (and no I’m not condoning or calling for violence … direct action doesn’t have to be violent – witness the civil rights movement). Oh, sure, we’ve had the “Tea Party” rallies and the like, but what is happening in Turkey is obviously much different than that. And if they sentiment expressed is the true cause, why is it that a country like Turkey, with only a short history of freedom (now under concentraged attack by the latest “servant of the country”) apparently have the gumption to say “enough”, when we simply roll over each time another of our freedoms is taken or pared down.

Now, I recognize there could be all sorts of other factions, to include extremist Islamist factions who don’t think Erdogan is moving far or fast enough, could now be trying to co-opt the protests and turn them into something else. But still, was the spark really “the government is interfering in everything” and if so, when, if ever, will that spark be struck here?

In previous IRS scandals it was the powerful abusing the powerful—a White House moving against prominent financial or journalistic figures who, because of their own particular status or the machineries at their disposal, could pretty much take care of themselves. A scandal erupts, there are headlines, and then people go on their way. The dreadful thing about this scandal, what makes it ominous, is that this is the elites versus regular citizens. It’s the mighty versus normal people. It’s the all-powerful directors of the administrative state training their eyes and moving on uppity and relatively undefended Americans.
That’s what makes this scandal different, and why if it’s not stopped now it will never stop. Because every four years you can get yourself a new president and a new White House, but you won’t easily get yourself a whole new administrative state. It’s there, it’s not going away, not anytime soon. If it isn’t forced back into its cage now, and definitively, it will prowl the land hungrily forever.
—Peggy Noonan

This is simply true.

The Obamic Decline has seen one thing rise enormously, and that is the administrative state. It does not simply go away, once expanded.

And it WILL be a reliable organ of the Collective, regardless of how conservative a president or future Congress may be. It HAS been so, and it WILL be more so.

It will take a fundamental, radical movement to pull it down, and intense, committed political will.

There is also this. The problem with unlimited government and protests is that the protests would have to be directed towards the people who created the problem who are the very same people you’d need to solve it. That would require the politicians to admit their mistakes and I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for that to happen.

You want the country to get off their duffs and riot? Well, take away the freebies. That will get the Free Sh*t Coalition rioting pretty good. But that’s not what you mean is it?

As for the better half of the country – we don’t riot (yet) Maybe we should – maybe we’ll have to. To say we haven’t gotten off our rear ends in this country is a bit of an overstatement – the Tea Party was doing such a decent job that Obama had to have the IRS try to strangle it in the crib.
I tell you this – it’s getting to the point.

Besides, we have First World problems, like, nothing we like to eat in the fridge today, selling toys for people to have fights WITH water.

Employment, gas prices, Obamacare, Aid to Illegal Democrats, uh, Aliens…sorry, I mean Immigration Reform, scandals… Stack, Stack, Stack.
If we had less to lose ora lot more to lose, it would/will get much much easier.

Vietnam… the privileged understood they could loose it all, and did something about it (and we’ve solved that problem, for the moment. We can endlessly tour the volunteer guys, they’ll never riot…)
Take a lot more shit away from people, send em to the ‘eastern front…’

The people who will riot FIRST when you take away stuff, will be the people who are getting their stuff ‘free’ from the government.

Meaning it almost certainly won’t be the posters, hardly any of the readers, or hardly any of the commenters on this site. We’ll continue to be good doobies and try and find ways to work in the system to fix the problems, and we won’t be the the first to view fire as one an approved methods.

Not, as they say, that there’s anything wrong with that, but I think it’s mostly who we are.

^^^This
Only when things become much less ‘comfortable’ and people are hungry, poor and/or no longer passified by the myriad of distractions provided by video games, satellite radio, internet, reality TV, etc

The Turkish riots are what #Occuppy had hoped for in the US, but they made the mistake of starting too early in the Spring when it was too cold. By the time it warmed up (for our fair weather protestors), #Occuppy was an obvious empty shell.

I guarantee the people taking the brunt of the crackdown are not organized in anyway that compares with the Muslim Brotherhood. And because of that the Muslim Brotherhood is likely better poised to take this as an opportunity.

Blah blah blah…
It’s a business. As long as it can take your money – and you can’t do anything about that, you can chafe at the harness all you want – but don’t top pulling the wagon or you’ll be horseburgers by morning.
No wonder the only people who satnd up to it are the certifiably insane. It is now a culture of whimptitude. baaaaaaaaaaaaa! (sheep)

“when, if ever, will that spark be struck here?”
Not in our lifetimes. Those who think that they stand to benefit from an ever growing federal government have the numbers now. Nothing is going to stem that tide. Sorry to say it but, America is done.